Empire wasn't perfect. I say this as a near-lifelong Star Wars fan and lover of stories. It's the perfectest Star Wars movie, yes, but not flawless, by a good stretch. The underscaled
Falcon exterior setpiece (with it's painfully-obviously-just-mounted-on-a-pole top quad-cannon), the ongoing issues with the
Falcon's interior (carried over from the first film), and the massively unanswered questions/issues of: How did the
Falcon get from the Hoth system to the Anoat system so quickly with no hyperdrive? How long did it then take them to get to the Bespin system? Ergo, how long was Luke on Dagobah?
Incidentally, as I've bitched elsewhere, I preferred the notion at the time Empire was being written that the Other Yoda mentioned was, indeed, Luke's long-lost and unsuspected sister... who wasn't Leia. The drastic foreshortening of the last four films into just the one meant abandoning that plot thread and having Leia be Luke's sister was just a clumsy way of tying it off. I wish I had the computer resources available to tackle an ambitious fan-edit to mash-up parts of Return of the Jedi with TFA to see how it works to have Rey be Luke's sister. There's a part of me that almost hopes the Leia thing was a bit of misdirection (unprecedented!) by Obi-Wan to deflect attention onto someone else and keep Luke's
real sister safe, since he wasn't really ready yet, and Obi-Wan didn't trust that he could keep it a secret from Vader. And unbeknownst to all of us, Luke's sister was put in carbon-freeze partway into the Dark Times as a fallback in case the son didn't pan out. And that's why her personal flashbacks are all post-Jakku -- hibernation scrambled her earlier memories. And Bail and Breha
did adopt a baby girl, who wasn't the twin sister, but also named her Leia as a triple blind. And she does have some Force-sensitivity, but not really enough to be Jedi material.
How's that?
The only other one I really like is the notion that Obi-Wan and Satine did get it on before he found himself getting too attached and broke it off, so he didn't know he had a daughter with her. And somehow along the way Luke finds out (maybe Sabine's still with the Rebellion after he joins and it comes up in conversation when he mentions Obi-Wan?), and after a tempestuous beginning (a la him and Mara Jade), they end up together.
I can't remember if there's anything in the new canon to support this, but the strong implication is just that -- that Plagueis did cause the conception of Anakin, and then Palpatine killed him. Beyond that... the Darth Plagueis novel was written late enough that the Story Group guided its larger elements, and I don't see Plagueis being a Muun being contradicted. That, plus Snoke and the Knights of Ren (that'd make a good name for a band -- you can have that!) aren't Sith. One thing I liked about some of the late EU reference works, like the New Essential Guides, the Essential Atlas, and the Essential Guide to Warfare, is that they were incorporating a lot of the early Star Wars notes. There's reference to the Legions of Lettow as a non-Sith Dark Side sect, there's reference to the Jedi-Bendu early on splitting over doctrinal differences into individual groups, and so forth. The Jedi (who were responsible for the Sith) were just the most visible/prominent.
One of the things that irks me for the divine conception of Anakin is that it technically should have been a girl. All embyoes are female unless/until a testosterone spike at a particular point in gestation switches it. In a parthenogenetic case like Anakin's, there would be no male parent, so no Y chromosome present to trigger such a spike. And since it seems fraternal twins (aka hyper-ovulation) can be passed genetically, it could be that Plagueis reached out through the Force and Shmi was the only one in range right at that moment who met that criterion -- two eggs released simultaneously, that he influenced to fertilize each other. But it should still have been XX, so you're on your own for the rest. Damn narrative demands... At any rate, the trait would be passed on to any of Anakin's kids, but not his wife, so apparently Padmé's family
also has a trait of hyper-ovulation. Further evidence Leia isn't actually their daughter, then?
That part not coincidence, but the rest... partially. R2 probably did his best to direct the pod to put down somewhere near the Lars homestead, cuz Ben's supposed to be nearby. But them splitting up? And the same jawa tribe picking up both of them? And the next place they stop being that specific farm? And Ben being out in the Jundland Wastes right when R2 had made it there? And the Empire hitting Luke's home right while he was out? There are definitely some coincidences, yes.
I haven't been, but I know from your posts that you're determined to be down on this film, so go on...
Yeah, no. From what I've read, Kathleen had some story and character input, but the creation of Rey and making her the central character wasn't part of it. Since a female writer didn't create her for the purpose of being an übercharacter to get the romantic attention of Han or Luke (the OT character crushes most likely for a female writer), the criteria for being a Mary Sue don't fit.
Nor is she an übercharacter in her own right. We have a track record in Luke, Anakin, and Ezra of Force-powerful people unknowingly channeling the Force based on their respective backgrounds. Anakin and Luke flew racing pods/airspeeders and unknowingly were using the Force to aid their piloting (and shooting, in the case of Luke) skills. Both later used the Force in life-or-death space battles. Ezra was basically using the Force to become a Parkour master. In the pilot of Rebels, he made a jump no ordinary person would have been able to, and the crew of the
Ghost who saw were suitably amazed. Rey's own abilities only seriously manifest after she accidentally pushes back against Kylo's mind probe hard enough to push into
his mind. I have no problem with her picking up a few things subconsciously while she was there. As for the lightsaber fight between them, between Kylo's injury and Rey drawing on her anger, I got no problems at all. She was mainly using staff forms with the saber, which I applaud the fight choreographers for. So she was drawing on her experience with her own weapon, and not miraculously picking up saber forms.
--Jonah
